


I Can't Believe You Talked Me Into This

by Minako1x2



Series: Tumblr Marvel Prompts [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Brotp, Dancing, Drinking, F/M, M/M, Natasha Is a Good Bro, Natasha has a plan, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Steve and Natasha are just friends, Steve has a secret, Writing Prompt, a night on the town, asguardian ale, going to a club, just a little, mention of past relationship with Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 09:33:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3972988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minako1x2/pseuds/Minako1x2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Writing prompt: "I can't believe you talked me into this." Steve and Natasha</p><p>Natasha convinces Steve to out for a night of dancing and fun. She brings a little something along to help him loosen up--and in the process discovers a little secret that leads to the best kind of planning a friend can have--</p><p>In other words--why Nat is so bent on finding Steve a date in the events of CA: The Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can't Believe You Talked Me Into This

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Windborn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windborn/gifts).



> Thanks to Windborn for hooking me up with a prompt for my Brotp! I love Steve and Nat together oh so much. ^_^
> 
> Just for fun. No ownership of characters or world, etc, etc. Marvel owns all. I simply revel in the wonder they have supplied us with.
> 
> This was not beta-ed. Any typos or weirdness is completely my fault and mine alone. (As always, this little drabbles are an exercise in brevity and speed for me, so . . . )

“I can’t believe you talked me into this.”

“Yes, you can. Because it’s something you’ve always wanted to do.”

“Technically, I didn’t know it was an option. We didn’t have places like . . . this.”

“Sure you did. Maybe the music and the lighting has changed, but the goal is the same.”

“I’m really not sure about that.” He could recall the big band sound, the soft lights, and the raucous laughter of men and women enjoying themselves as they danced like it was yesterday. (In some ways, it had been.) But he’d been there as an observer then, a fly on the wall, sipping carefully at whatever drink had been handed him as he watched Bucky swing and glide across the dance floor, twirling whichever girl had been lucky enough to call herself his date that night. Steve’s date--if he’d had one at all--had usually found herself another partner by then. Steve was happy enough watching Bucky move, wishing for and imagining things that he could never have . . .

This, though. This was something else altogether.

The lights flashed and danced around the room, changing color and shape with each sweep. The music was loud enough that he felt it in his bones, and there weren’t many lyrics to make out. People moved like an ocean storm at the center of the room, churning and lurching to the heavy beat that filled the air. They all, to a one, wore a mask over their eyes--the only way to get in when the theme was Masquerade.

Which was the only reason Steve had caved to Natasha’s skewed reasoning.

“Come on,” she said, shouting over the music as she took his hand and drew him into the sea of music and sweat and flesh.

He still didn’t know how to dance.

Natasha dragged him to the bar first, where she conveyed something to the bartender which resulted in him passing along two identical drinks, one of which Nat passed to Steve. “Here,” she shouted, leaning in so her lips brushed his ear so he could hear. “This will help.”

He couldn’t get drunk, and Natasha knew that, so he wasn’t sure what her point was. His skepticism must have come through in his face, because Nat laughed, and pulled him along, away from the bar. Once in a dark corner, Steve’s drink sloshing around in the glass from the haste of their journey, Nat reached down and pulled a flask from her boot. Without hesitation, she poured the contents into Steve’s drink.

Her black mask, decorated with silver spider webs that accented her green eyes, bumped against his--dark blue and subtle, she had called it--as she leaned in, guiding the glass towards his mouth. “Asked Thor for a little help,” she said. “Asguardian. Should do the trick for you. Did last time, yeah?”

Last time. Last time, Steve had jumped at the chance of actually feeling drunk once more. Before that, the last time he had tried to drink himself into oblivion, the last time he had sought the ill-advised solace of inebriation, he’d been denied. Thor had offered, and Steve had accepted. He’d grieved Bucky that night, as he had tried to back in ’44.

The next morning had been brutal.

The memory of that must have been all over his face as well. Nat smiled at him. “Not nearly as much as last time. Just enough to loosen up. Your call.”

Steve looked out over the vast sea of people, dancing, moving, drinking, having a good time. He was barely thirty, even if most of the time he felt closer to ninety-five. _You’re entitled to a little fun, Steve,_ Natasha had said when she first told him of her plans.

Steve downed his drink.

It hit fast. Cool going down his throat, then spreading a pleasant warmth through him. Nat had finished her own drink, smiling slyly at him before taking his hand, and drawing him onto the dance floor.

The music thrummed through him, but that didn’t mean he knew what to do. Jumping out of planes--sure. Taking on aliens from across the galaxy--all right. Hell, he’d let himself be pumped full of an experimental serum in the hopes of being able to help the war effort. Steve was all about taking risks. But dancing? Well, it was enough to make him hesitate. Bucky had tried to teach him, but after a few nearly broken toes, he’d dropped to the couch declaring that Steve had two left feet.

Hadn’t stopped them from trying again. And in the end Bucky did have a broken toe.

“Nat, I’m not sure this is the best idea,” Steve hollered over the music.

“Can’t hear you,” she said back with a smile that seemed to suggest she could hear him just fine. They were at the center of the sea of people now, and all around him people moved and swayed and bumped into one another, not a care in the world. Natasha placed his hands on her hips, and began to dance. “Don’t think about it,” she said, coaxing him to follow her lead. “Just move to the music.”

Music did sound a lot better now that he had his full hearing. Steve had noticed that not long after waking in the future, when he’d acquired some old records of songs he knew, and discovered that there were layers to the music he had never picked up before. For a while, he’d entertained the thought that perhaps that was why he had been so terrible at dancing--he hadn’t heard what others heard. Now, he was fairly sure it was just because he had no rhythm.

Every time he tried to move with Natasha, he moved the wrong way, colliding with her in a way that broke the effortless smoothness of her dance.

She went up on tiptoe, pressing her lips to his ear. “You’re thinking too hard. Stop thinking. Let the drink work, and just move with me.” Her fingers threaded through his hair, and she rolled her hips against his, working him into a swaying motion that felt almost comfortable. “There you go. See?” Her breath felt warm against his cheek. “Easy. Just like sex, but with clothes on.”

Steve thanked God she couldn’t see his face, because the heat he suddenly felt there was in no way related to the alcohol.

Then he realized he had stopped moving.

Natasha, had been trained to pick up on even the most minute gestures of body language, to read people like an open book with a broken spine. Steve didn’t have a prayer. “Rogers,” she said.

She knew. There was no point in hiding his groan. Amidst all the people dancing, jumping, swaying, moving, she drew back just enough to see his face, green eyes calculating, assessing. One perfect eyebrow arched dramatically. “Really?”

Steve just sighed, and nodded. It was the truth. Close enough. He’d never--with a woman. And though he and Bucky had “fooled around” they’d never gotten too far. Just some kissing, touching, hands, mouths . . . By the time they had both realized that their longing was not in fact one sided, the war had claimed them both soon after, and time had become a rare commodity. And then . . .

His nod was close enough to the truth.

“Well then,” Natasha said, surprising Steve with the complete lack of judgment he detected in her usually very blunt and unabashed tone. She pulled the flask from her boot again and pressed it into his hands. “You’re gonna need a bit more of this.”

Steve drank, letting the otherworldly alcohol burn away his impending embarrassment.

The song changed, the beat picked up, and soon Steve felt nothing but the warmth in his veins, the thrum in his bones, and the heated rhythm of Natasha’s body against his as they danced.

 

He woke the next morning with a merciless headache, and very little recollection of what had happened after that.

Groaning, and regretting the sound immediately, Steve rolled over in bed, groping his bedside table for the glass of water he usually kept there. He found instead a bottle of Gatorade, and a couple of aspirin that would only do him a minimal amount of good. He swallowed the aspirin and began nursing the electrolyte-enhanced water as he ungracefully made his way out of his bedroom.

Natasha was in his kitchen, cooking and looking far too chipper considering how shitty Steve felt. She was dressed in jeans and a tank, and looked like she’d a part of the living, waking world for hours. “There you are,” she said. “Finally. I was beginning to worry.”

“What time is it?”

“Nearly noon.”

Noon? Steve couldn’t remember the last time he had slept that late. He liked to get up with the sun. Today he would have preferred the sun to stay away.

“Are you hungry?” She flipped another pancake onto an already full plate, and slid it across the counter.

“Maybe later.” Steve’s stomach rolled at the thought of food. “Did, um . . . How did I get home?”

“I saw you home safely. I also guarded your honor. There were more than a few girls who wanted to take you home themselves and have their wicked way with you.”

“What?”

“Oh, you really don’t remember, do you?” She pouted, then grabbed her phone, calling up a video and placing it on the counter where he could see. “Here. I made sure to document. For posterity.”

The video was--well, there was no way that was _him._ That man, whoever that was, that man moved like he had created the music himself. Like he knew every inch of his own body, and how to control it, how to use it to his greatest advantage. That man moved among the masked women like he’d been doing it his whole life, like it was his greatest talent. That man reminded him more of Bucky than of himself. There was little chance this video was of Steve Rogers.

And yet . . .

“Phase one, complete,” Natasha said, taking a bite of her pancake. “Onto Phase two.”

“Phase two? What--what’s phase two? What was phase one?”

“Got you dancing. Relaxing, having fun. That was phase one.”

“So what’s phase two?” Steve asked, afraid of the answer.

Natasha smirked. “Get you a date.”

**Author's Note:**

> I kinda have an idea for a companion fic to this one . . . We shall see. We shall see. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments are always appreciated! 
> 
> Come say hi on [Tumblr!](http://www.minako1x2.tumblr.com) More prompts are always welcome too! ^_^


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